Baby Come Back
by Conigliomannaro
Summary: They split a cab on the West Coast one morning, exchanged phone numbers in a hurry while Axel's flight was about to take off. They start calling each other out of boredom and curiosity, until the habit sticks; until Roxas' voice becomes familiar, until his features begin to blur in his memory. At that point, it's time to meet again; Roxas said he would be waiting, after all.
1. Chapter 1

Dedicated to Monaps, Betaed by Morphia. It's about two boys who find each other pretty and spend a lot of time on their phone. Stuff ensues.

* * *

His mouth still tastes of coffee and bacon – an awful combination, if you ask him – when Axel flings himself through the front door. He's probably forgotten half his stuff in the hotel room, but he's overslept and he had about half an hour to shower, finish packing and throw something edible down his throat, praying to the gods it would choose the right pipe; he didn't exactly have the time to find someone who could perform heimlich on him, so choking was a luxury he couldn't afford. Turns out a bad hotel is equipped with a bad kitchen – who would have thought – and he could have sworn he was chewing bacon fried in enough grease to fill an Olympic swimming pool, while he rushed through his breakfast.

Again, over-fried bacon combined with bad coffee is a bad combo, and his stomach is knocking against the back of his throat the second he flies outside; that could also be because, in his rush, Axel forgot the seven-and-a-half steps in front of the hotel's entrance, but theoe are details of minor importance. While he somehow manages to avoid breaking his neck on the pavement and he clings to his briefcase for dear life, his feet find the asphalt and he's immediately sprinting forward, the yellow silhouette of a cab starting off in the distance. "Taxi!" he shouts, waving his arms like a madman. "Taxi! Hey, come on, stop!"

No dice; the cab sprints off, and Axel mentally resumes all the curses he's learned from third grade up to college, gritting his teeth. In that neighbourhood is gonna be hell finding a new cab in time.

He grabs his phone, ready to try and call one, when a new yellow car stops by just a few feet away.

Axel rejoices – his face is transfigured with joy – and he runs up to it, practically tearing its door open. Before the driver has the time to turn around and speak to him, Axel's flown inside like a bullet. "Oh, thank all the gods of all the pantheons," he cheers, grabbing the driver's seat and leaning in, "Please, I need to be at the airport sooner than yesterday."

The cab driver doesn't seem very impressed with his rush, though. "Mister Benucci?" he asks turning around. He's kinda old, looks a little toad like, and at first his words don't really sink in. Axel's face falls for a second in confusion –what? – but then he realizes the horrible truth: he's hijacked some stranger's taxi, and said stranger will come any minute to kick him out. For a second he's tempted to lie – Yes, that's my name, Axel Benucci at your service – but the door of the cab opens again and a blond head pokes inside.

"I'm sorry, I think this is my car," the owner of said blond head says. Some blue eyed boy: really pretty, too, but Axel needs this cab and the stranger couldn't have arrived at a worse time.

The stranger is probably older than a boy, given the low timber of his voice, but Axel wouldn't give that face more than sixteen, eighteen years tops. There's something familiar in the kid's features, but Axel can't really recall where he's seen him before.

"Split?" he tries, "I need to get to the airport in like twenty, tops."

"Lucky day, then," the boy grins, pushing in his own suitcase and sitting next to Axel. "I'm heading there too." he nods at the driver from the rear view mirror and adds: "Benucci, yeah. The airport, please. Looks like we're in a hurry."

Axel lets out a long sigh of relief, lets himself crumble against the backrest and his eyes slide closed for a second. "Man, man, I could really kiss you right about now," he breathes out thoughtlessly, and just when he hears the kid chuckle from his right he realizes what he's said. He turns around cautiously, but the blond thing looks amused, mostly. "I would add a 'no homo', but I really can't be assed to care right now; you saved my life today, really." he holds out a hand for the kid to shake, and adds: "Axel Sullivan. Nice to meet you."

"Roxas Benucci," the boy chuckles, shaking his hand, and really, Axel shouldn't call him boy but he just looks so young, "You're the athlete who doesn't believe in stairs," he jokes. "Quite a flight. At first I was scared to walk out because I feared I'd find your corpse at the bottom of the staircase."

Oh god, he saw that, Axel thinks, feeling like he's physically forcing off a blush. Then he realizes where he's seen the kid before.

"Oh, you're the one who fought with the waitress about the coffee at breakfast!" he exclaims with a beam of realization. "I recognized a few curse words that sounded a lot like Spanish, but I couldn't quite place them."

Roxas nods with a laughter. This guy is kind of hilarious. "Yeah, Italians tend to get very territorial over food, especially when they order an espresso and get served a steaming mug of cow piss."

"You're lucky you haven't ordered a cappuccino," Axel snorts. "Who knows what they would have brought you, then."

Roxas has a really great laughter, Axel decides.

* * *

"So, mister Benucci," Axel starts, but the kid cuts him off.

"Please, call me Roxas. I'm not even twenty four yet," Roxas says. Now that he listens to him more carefully, Axel does recognize the accent; Italians seem to have the biggest problems with R's and T's, most of the time; Axel would know, he's travelled everywhere in his life, and he's not even a native speaker himself, though he's lived in the States for the past twenty four years. The Russian accent comes out to play when he's really tired or when he's really angry, generally. Sometimes when he's fucking, actually, but that's definitely beyond the point.

"Alright, Roxas," Axel nods. "What were you doing in the worst hotel on the West Coast?"

Roxas shrugs. "My boss ain't the richest around," he chuckled. "I must look all pretty and smart when I go to meet customers and stuff, but god forbid I spend ten dollars more for a bedroom without bugs in the sink."

"That's part of the charm," Axel snorts. It's easy to chat with the kid – he's definitely the benignant kind, at least in this situation – and there's traffic, so why not? "You're pretty young to be shipped overseas for dealing with customers," he comments amicably. "You must be good at what you do."

"You'll see how good I am when I convince you to pay the entire cab fare," Roxas says with a sly smirk. "But it's easy to be on the job young when you're the boss' flesh and blood."

"Oh," Axel hums with a nod, "Family business?"

"Pretty much. Disappointed?" Roxas chuckles, flashing him a pretty intense blue gaze.

"Well, I was expecting some kind of inspirational tale about the kid from the block who climbs the social ladder yadda yadda, but I'll let it slide because you're a pretty cool guy."

"Too kind," Roxas laughs, shaking his head. "I've been working in dad's office ever since high school graduation, but after university he kicked me on a plane with less than zero budget and told me 'If you bring back some results I'm gonna promote you." Roxas' smile is white and kind of blinding, and Axel has to mentally force himself to look away; he's always had a fascination with beauty, but if the kid caught him staring it would have been kind of hard to explain that he was just admiring him from a purely aesthetic point of view. "I make minimum wage, see, so I grabbed the opportunity."

The taxi stops at a traffic light while Roxas is still talking, and his eyes widen when he goes quiet. There's a slightly sheepish expression on his face, and Axel gives him a questioning glance.

"Sorry," Roxas picks up again, "I kinda went all confessional on you."

"Nah, it's okay," Axel nods, "We've got to chat the cab trip off, somehow. You wouldn't prefer an awkward quiet ride, would you?"

"Heavens, no," Roxas smiles. "And you? What were you doing in the worst hotel on the West Coast?"

"My supervisor is my best friend and sometimes likes to fuck with me," Axel snorts. "I'm not even going to try and find an excuse for this. I was never supposed to be rooming at the Four Seasons, but I'm pretty sure the last time they cleaned the fryer in that kitchen Australia hadn't been discovered yet."

Roxas chuckles. "Okay, fair enough. They must hate you pretty bad," he agrees. "And where will you be going now? If you catch your plane, I mean."

"With some luck, my luggage and I will be both delivered in the same airport; Moscow."

"Oh, Russia. Speak Russian?" Roxas hums conversationally.

"Mom comes from Saint Petersburg," Axel nods. "Russian is my first language, though I've lived in the states for as long as I can remember." At that Roxas' eyes shine, but Axel's heard what the kid is about to ask one time too many. "I'm not gonna speak Russian for you," he huffs, though he's chuckling a little.

"I can speak Italian for you," Roxas offers; then he looks at Axel a little cautiously. "Too friendly?"

"Considering that I'm Russian, you're probably a few thousand times friendlier than what my mother tried to raise me to be. I took from my dad, though, so no, you're cool. No worries," Axel is amused, mostly, slightly intrigued. The kid is younger than him, but not that much younger, and had they not been wearing suits and ties, the kid wouldn't be worrying about being too exuberant. Especially with someone like him – though he has to admit Roxas can't know that yet – but that's beside the point. "Where are you headed?"

"Home," Roxas answers. "I have to follow this transaction with these customers from dad's office, and if everything works fine, I'll hop on a flight to Japan." Axel seems curious, and Roxas smiles. "Dad dabbles in the art world; we organize art expos, touring exhibition for famous paintings, that kinda stuff."

"Oh," Axel grins, "I could use a Rafaello in my bedroom."

"Raffaello," Roxas corrects, with the correct Italian pronunciation, all long R's and double consonants. Axel has to admit, it does sound pretty.

"I shouldn't have dismissed your offer to speak Italian, that's one fine sounding language," he jokes.

Roxas shrugs. "I will never understand English speaking people's fascination with Italian. It's not that big a deal."

"You haven't heard Russian," Axel snorts.

"I have, and it's pretty." Roxas points out. Axel shakes his head with half a chuckle.

"You must be deaf," he says fondly. "So, back to Italy and then Japan? Those zones are out of my usual range. I should try to get Saix to give me a few weeks off and go see the world. Which sounds stupid, really, since I'm barely ever at home at all."

"Heh, I'm not really much for oriental architecture or art, but the food is amazing and people are very nice. Plus I get to see a gorgeous tiny girl, once I'm there, so I'm happy when I can visit her."

"Girlfriend?" Axel asks, and Roxas raises an eyebrow that's practically taunting him; do you really need to ask?, it says, don't you already know the answer?.

"Girls are pretty, but I get bored of pretty so quickly," Roxas says cautiously, and yep, Axel should have probably imagined that; his gaydar works best when he's half drunk in clubs at night, but the way the kid didn't stiffen or grimace at all at his initial 'I could kiss you' meant that he was either up in his team, or a very enlightened straight man; and in Axel's experience, there's a severe lack of the latter all around the world, unfortunately.

"Oh boy, don't I feel ya," Axel chuckles, and he's not sure, but the kid may have relaxed just a little bit; in any other situation they would have been buying each other beers already and engaging in drunken burp challenges, Axel's sure. There's a very precise kind of familiarity between them that he can't explain, but he really doesn't care. It's a pleasant ride.

"What are you going to be doing, in Moscow?" Roxas asks. Axel shrugs, because really, it's a lot less fancy than organizing art expos.

"Keeping in touch with our Russian customers. Nanotechnology, you know, the kind of thing that makes money nowadays. The job is boring, but I get top notch technology in the process, so I can't complain."

"Ah, yeah," Roxas chuckles. "Do you have one of those smart-phones that can even fly you to the moon?"

"You betcha," Axel chuckles. "I detect a tiny bit of envy in your eyes. Daddy doesn't buy you nice phones?"

"Where were you, when I told you I make minimum wage?" Roxas snorts. "I'm one of the very rare examples of nepotism that pays just to an extent. Yes, I got a job, but my dad is twice of a dick with me than he is with random not-blood-related employee."

"Poor kiddo," Axel snorts.

"Quiet, you," Roxas cuts off, sending him a half assed glare. "Dick."

"Nah, you got me confused with that other redhead you gave a ride to last week. Name's Axel, not dick."

Roxas chuckles, shakes his head. Through the distance, the white line of the airport.

"We're there," the kid says, his voice oddly quiet. "Do you have time for a coffee?"

Axel checks his watch. He really needs to split.

"No, I don't think so, sorry." He wishes he could, really, but the next flight is in eighteen hours, and that way he'd skip three meetings; Saix will have his head on a plate, if that happens. "Tell you what," he says, frantically rummaging through his pockets and fishing out a business card, "Hit me up if you're ever in Moscow, Korea or New York."

Roxas chuckles. "That's quite the 'If'," he points out.

"Well, hit me up if you're bored, then," Axel concedes, "I get bored easily, when I'm on business trips."

"Careful, I could take you up for it," Roxas smiles. "I could call you from the office. Dad can't speak English to save his life, so he would think I'm talking to customers."

"You sneaky fuck," Axel laughs, shaking his head and collecting his stuff. There's not much, really, just his briefcase and a couple sheets he was carrying in his hands. He's already calculating the time he has to do all the things he's supposed to before he can be seating in his comfortable first class spot – he booked that himself, so Saix could suck it – on his way to Ma's place. It's nice having a familiar place waiting for him, and he's already thinking fondly of his grandmother atrocious cookery and her fluffy beds. He's gonna take a seven hours long shower as soon as he arrives, then he's gonna sleep the rest of the day off, to get ready for the meetings first thing in the morning.

God, time zones are so weird. He's never got used to them – probably never will.

He realizes he's been spacing out when the cab stops; he grins, shakes Roxas' hand and throws a handful of cash at the driver before he practically throws himself out of the door. He has about four minutes to check-in and get to the gates. Maybe he can do it. "Bye kiddo, it's been a blast! Thank you for saving my ass!"

He doesn't know that, inside the cab, Roxas is looking at him with a smirk and thinking that "Well, that ass was worth it" while storing his business card safely in his wallet.

Sneaky fuck indeed.


	2. Moscow Snow

Betaed by CaseyValhalla  
Summary: They split a cab in the USA, then start calling each other out of boredom - out of curiosity - talking through countries and oceans of distance.  
No big deal, right?

* * *

It's an extremely cold morning in Moscow, when Axel's phone rings; that is not that rare of an occurrence, of course, but the number on the screen is an unusual one. Even the area code is kind of unfamiliar, and Axel considers not picking up just out of distrust; then he considers that it could be Saix calling from a business trip, and stretches out to pull his phone to himself from the nightstand without having to leave the warm shell of his blankets.

Success.

"Mmmm'ello?" he croaks out in a sleepy voice. Whoever it is, they have no familiarity with time zones – it's freaking five am. Saix probably wouldn't call so early, unless he wanted tojust to bother Axel; which wouldn't be past him, but lately they're being pretty civil to each other, so he's not surprised when the voice on the other side of the line is an unknown one.

"Hey, is that Axel?" the voice asks, sounding a little unsure. Male, young, calling from somewhere in the western side of Europe, judging from the area code; Axel's mind is drawing blanks.

"Mh," he groans, rolling a little deeper between the covers so the blankets will cover his ears, too. Moscow in winter is a fucking subsidiary of the North Pole, and he hatesthe cold. "It's five am in an icy Moscow day. My cat better be on fire, because at this time in this cold I don't care about anything else."

"Oh porco cazzo," the stranger's voice hisses, and Axel mentally rules out French and Spanish from the lists of languages the boy can be speaking. Definitely too many vowels for French, and too strong a zed for Spanish. Before he can work his way through the right deduction, the voice picks up again and clears the mystery. "I'm Roxas, remember? Roxas Benucci, we split a cab back across the puddle."

Oh! Oh, right, yeah. Roxas. Tiny, blond haired, blue eyes, very pretty, friendly Italian kid who brought him to the airport back in America. Axel barely remembers giving the boy his number, but yeah, everything clicks; the language, the area code, and the fact that the kid called him before the sun has dawned.

Axel is impressed with himself for not picking up the phone with some obscene angry curse in Russian, actually.

"Roxas, kiddo, hey," he yawns, though the friendliness he's trying to use to defrost his tone does nothing to mask the annoyance of being awoken so early. "You haven't got a good grasp on time zones, do you?"

"Evidently I don't," Roxas answers, and through the fake cheerful tone, Axel can just imagine both the awkward expression of embarrassment on his face and the traffic light red of his cheeks. The mental image makes him smile. "Do you want me to call back later?" Roxas asks sheepishly.

Axel thinks about it; he doesn't have to see his customers until noon for lunch, and his eyes are still very heavy with sleepiness. "Yeah, please. Call back in four hours, if you don't mind."

"I'm really sorry," Roxas murmurs, and this time the embarrassment clearly bleeds out in his tone. "I can never make sense of time zones. I thought It'd be eight am, there. I'm sorry."

He sounds positively mortified.

"I'll fall back asleep in five nanoseconds, don't worry," Axel smiles, speaking sleepily into the phone while his eyes are already slowly fluttering closed. "Bye."

Roxas is still apologizing, when an even whistling noise comes softly through the speaker of his phone.

Axel is sleeping.

* * *

When Axel's phone rings again, he's just done shaving and is nursing a minor cut on his jawline. Ouch. After shave on open wounds burns like a bitch, god damn it. He pushes a piece of toilet paper against it and runs the razor under the tap to clean it quickly, checks his face again. Mhn. Two days in Moscow and he's still jet lagged as hell; oh, well, he'll get the hang of it. Now, let's just check who the hell is calling.

+39.

Oh, right. The Italian kid.

"Roxas," he greets in the speaker, propping the phone between his shoulder and jaw and finishing the after shave on the opposite side of his face. Fuck, the cut is still bleeding. He needs to remember that his electric razor won't fit in the sockets of babuška's bathroom, but he keeps forgetting because her house always feels like home. And, every time, he ends up cutting his chin; he will never learn to shave with regular razors. It's kind of humiliating, really. "Hey."

"You sound awake," Roxas' voice jokes on the other side of the line. "Sorry for earlier."

"No big deal," Axel says with a shrug, though Roxas can't see him and he knows it. He turns on the light of the mirror and opens the cabinet, looking for his eye drops. There they are. Take a deep breath, Axel. "I literally fell asleep right after your call, so I only missed out on a couple minutes of sleep. You may wanna invest in one of those cool watches that tell you what time it is all across the world, though."

"Ha-ha," Roxas huffs; there's a small silence, then he picks up again. "Not right after, though. You fell asleep while I was still apologizing."

Axel leans closer to the mirror, tilts his head back slightly and dumps the first eye drop in. Ow-fucking-ow. Fuck his eyes. Fuck his fucking eyes and those fucking drops. Ow. "I did?" he jokes, but his voice sounds slightly tied up. "I probably did. There are very few things that can stand between me and Morpheus' arms, and a cell phone ain't one a' those."

Roxas chuckles on the other side of the line, and the second drop falls in. , will those damn drops everstop burning like that?

"Yeah, I gathered something like that, too," Roxas says, and there's mirth in his voice. "I bet you didn't expect me to call you for real."

"I confess for a second I thought in the rush I had given you the business card of my hairdresser," Axel snorts, eyes batting open and closed while three enormous tears run down his cheeks. "So yeah, I kind of wasn't expecting you to call."

"Hey, your hairdresser would be a pretty good networking point. If he manages to make sense of that red mane, he's gotta be one tough motherfucker."

Axel snorts when he thinks of Naminé. "Tough? Yeah, but probably not in the way you think," he admits. "So. Having a slow day?"

"The slowest. I finished my work for the entire freakin week, and I'm alone at the office, but I gotta stay in because we're waiting for a call from our offices in Shangai. How long are you gonna be free?"

"Mh, about one hour. Can you afford one hour on the phone with Moscow, though?"

"I have one of them international calls and cell phones stuff thingies on my phone," Roxas says, and Axel can just picture him shrugging. "I pay a certain amount every month and I call wherever and whenever I want."

"Cell phones stuff thingies," Axel chuckles. He should probably do something to 'make sense of his mane', actually, because he's got one of the worst cases of bed head of the last few centuries. "I like the way you talk."

"I aim to please," Roxas replies right away. "Keep me company. But first, hey, seriously, am I disturbing you?"

"Nah, just getting dressed," Axel says, pushing his pants down with one hand. "Do you mind if I put you on speaker so I don't risk dropping this expensive portable phone booth in the toilet?"

"Are you alone?" Roxas asks.

" Babuškais ironing clothes in the other room."

"Is that your girlfriend?" Roxas asks, sounding quite perplexed.

"Oh my god, thank you for the mental scar, I'm gonna need months of therapy to unsee my grandmother in frilly underwear," Axel groans, scrunching up his nose. " Babuškais Russian for granny. Gross."

"Oh, bummer," Roxas huffs, "I was planning to phone-seduce you into a panting mess, but I don't wanna traumatize your granny. I'll behave."

Axel laughs – flat out laughs – and shakes his head. "My grandmother doesn't speak one word of English, but yeah, just in case, behaving will do."

"You're missing out."

"I believe you." Axel fiddles a little with his phone and goes back to his room, tosses it on the undone bed. "You're on speaker. Keep it PG."

"PG13?" Roxas jokes, and Axel chuckles and plays along.

"Mentions of adult situations, but no female nipples showing," he instructs, "Male nipples are acceptable, for some reason."

He hears Roxas laughs and he smiles, picks up a clean pair of socks from the drawer and puts them on.

"Alright, no lady boobs," Roxas concedes magnanimously. "It's stupidly cold, here." there's a short pause, then Roxas picks up again, and his voice sounds slightly more amused than before. "But I suppose Moscow is a little colder, huh?"

"Just a teeny little bit," Axel agrees. "I mean, I don't know how cold it is there in Pastaland, but we are well below the zero."

"Don't," Roxas half whines, "I'm not calling halfway across the world to hear the same old trite jokes I could find in the comment section of a Youtube video."

"Sorry," Axel says, feeling a little stupid. Ah, good, Axel, start collecting gaffes. "Didn't mean to offend ya."

"No offense taken, it's not offensive per se. That kind of humour just gets old real fast and I've been in the business long enough to be more than fed up with it. And this doesn't mean that if you ever come here I won't have some neat restaurants to recommend you. We're Italians. We are professionalsat eating."

"I'll keep that in mind," Axel chuckles, buttoning up his slacks. "I wouldn't mind stumbling about the boot shaped country for a couple weeks, in the summer. Where you at?"

"Florence. You know, the place with the cool looking dome thingy."

"I have a major and a master in languages and I minored in economics, sexy face, I know where the Brunelleschi's dome is," Axel sighs. "You know, thiskind of patronizing European attitude gets old fast too."

Roxas' laughter is a little nervous.

"Well, at least now we're even," Axel yawns, letting himself fall on the bed.

"I think you're forgetting the part where I wake you up before dawn," Roxas chuckles a little awkwardly. "Sorry about that, again."

"I will survive," Axel yawns, looking at the ceiling. It's actually nice to be talking to someone under the age of ninety five, for a change. For the last two days in Moscow he has seen just babuškaand their Russian department manager, and Axel's grandmother was the one with the better mental agility out of the two. "Florence's gotta be real pretty," he comments thoughtfully.

"It is," Roxas replies. "Moscow gotta be really nice, too."

Axel smiles. Babuška's home, the old bakery store down the road, St Basil's Cathedral. "It is." Moscow never fails to make him feel warm, even when it's an icy side branch of Hell Incorporated.

There's a short silence, and a beeping sound comes from the phone. Axel turns to it, gives a sigh and picks it up to check the time. Yep.

"Say, kiddo, I've gotta go," he says, "Gotta meet customers for lunch. Do you mind if I call you back tomorrow?"

"You wanna call back?" Roxas' voice rings loud and cheerful, "I fucked up less than I thought."

"Yeah, I'm an old and lonely man, Roxas. Talking to you was the highlight of my day, today."

"Man, I'm sorry," Roxas plays along in the best dramatic tone he can muster up, "Your life must really suck cock."

"Yeah," Axel sighs theatrically. "Even my life sucks more cock than I. I'm such a sad little mal'čik, kiddo."

"Don't put yourself down," Roxas' voice jokes while Axel gets up to work the tie around his neck. "You're young, you can still turn your life around."

"Too lazy," Axel snorts. "I'll just stick to calling you tomorrow, thanks."

"Alright, belloccio," Roxas laughs. Before Axel can ask what that means, he's picking up again. "I'll wait for your call, then. Have a good day. Dasdidania."

He's already hung up when Axel, with a fond smile on his face, finishes adjusting his tie and his glasses whispering:

"It's do svidanija, little one."


	3. Midnight Talk

Betaed by CaseyValhalla.

* * *

The only thing Axel inherited from his mother is a somewhat impressive resistance to cold; he likes to complain about it, mostly because he's used to the temperatures down in Texas, but normally he doesn't even mind Moscow in winter that much. And in Moscow, when it's cold, it's ___really _cold.  
His Russian genes, instead, never particularly care to show up when he drinks. He can handle as much as a man his size can, and considering how skinny he is, it's not surprising when – around three am, after a day courting the customers that landed them at a Japanese restaurant, among sushi and generous servings of sake – he's stumbling about up the stairs of his grandmother's place.

There's a signed contract in his briefcase, but he's pretty sure the old lady wouldn't particularly care about it, if she found him passed out in a pool of his own vomit on the second landing.

___I'm too old for this job._

As he feared, yeah, he can't seem to put the key through the keyhole, and he doesn't want to wake babushka: she's old, and she always complains about how hard it is for her to fall asleep. He sits down, back to the door, and sighs. Four a.m. He would browse the internet for a bit, but his glasses are in the briefcase, and he really doesn't want to have to fish them out from underneath the pile of signed files and brochures he's stashed in there. He huffs, glaring in the darkness down the stairs, and gives a brief growl. ___Stupid fucking useless eyes_. He's virtually useless, up close, without his glasses. He tried with contacts, but the result resembled far too closely the aftermath of an afternoon smoking weed, so he had to settle back on glasses.

And eye drops.

And painful, annoying days where he could barely open his eyes during the day; recurrent check-ups with his doctor, and discussions upon discussions about the possibility of surgery. He isn't that keen on having people sticking needles and lasers and other surgical stuff in his eyes, so he's always bailed out on surgery, but maybe, he should.

___Nope. Not considering eye surgery while I'm too drunk and blind to read stuff on my phone_.

His phone. Oh. Oh, right. He could call the kiddo. What time would that be, in Italy? ___Let's see, four a.m. in Moscow should be…_he frowns, huffing slightly when the numbers just won't settle for a second to let him operate the conversion. It should be late, but he's not sure what time it would be, exactly. Probably, too late to call. Axel hums, recovering Roxas' number from the answered calls, saving it and checking if the kiddo appears among his Whatsapp contacts. He does.

___Hey. You up? I'm drunk and I can't make sense of the time zones__. ____Can I call?_

It doesn't take long, really. Just a couple minutes later, Axel's phone buzzes.

___Sleep is for the weak. Call away._

Axel chuckles, yawns, and starts his call. Roxas responds in a matter of seconds, and he's a liar, liar liar liar. His voice is raw and husky, ___totally _pasted together with drowsiness.

But really, his eagerness to talk to him is cute, isn't it?

* * *

"You just woke up," Axel comments, a little slurred around the edges, after Roxas' puppy squeak of 'Hello!' as he picked up the phone. He sounds slightly accusing, but mostly he's fond, a little amused. Puppy eyed Italian kid tearing himself from his bed to respond to a message, and accepting to talk on the phone with a bored drunk Russian businessman at stupid o' clock in the night, come on. What's not to love? It may be the sake's fault, but if Axel didn't know better, he'd coo.

"No," Roxas replies, voice cracking a little. There's a brief silence, then "Maybe?" he adds.

"You shouldn't have. I texted precisely not to wake you up," Axel mutters, sounding oddly scolding.

"It's okay, now we're even," Roxas smiles. "And it's just one fifteen in the morning, not that big a deal."

"That's exactly the problem," Axel huffs. "I liked having the upper hand."

Roxas chuckles. "Hey," he says, sounding amused, a little curious. "You're speaking different than usual."

"Drunk," Axel fills in. "Sometimes the Russian roots come out to play, when I'm drunk or tired."

He doesn't mention that it happens even when he fucks, because – he figures – that's not really Roxas' business.

"I like it," Roxas comments. "You do kinda sound like a bad guy from the Bond movies, though."

"Thank you, ___sig-nor _Benucci," Axel snorts, rolling his eyes. He decides to gloss over the few jokes about Roxas' own accent just for the sake of being nice – and because being funny requires a little too much mental work – and yawns. He's kind of sleepy. "So, how did it go with those customer you were meeting back in the West Coast? Did it all work out in the end?"

"Nope," Roxas says, and there's so much disappointment in Roxas' tone that Axel can almost see him deflate through the phone. "Dad said I can keep trying, though. Any tip on how to charm customers?"

"Be smooth, but without giving the impression you wanna suck their dicks. Unless they're into that, in which case be the flirtiest vixen you can manage." Axel hums out.

"That sounds kind of the same thing you'd tell an escort on their first day on the job."

Axel smirks. Good analogy. "Well, we ___are _kind of overpriced and sexless prostitutes," he agrees. "We kinda gotta mold onto the customers to sign contracts. Some more unscrupulous colleagues a' mine go the extra mile, but it ain't worth it. Don't go the extra mile, kiddo."

"Thank you for the concern, but I'm kinda picky about who gets to swallow my unborn babies," Roxas answers right back, a slight edge of tension in his voice. Axel makes a mental note not to make jokes about Roxas' morality again and hums. Not that hard to steer the conversation away.

"Pity. I was considering applying for the position," he snorts, yawning again.

Roxas lets out a kind of nervous laughter, on the other side of the line. "Hah, didn't know we were there yet," he hums. "And you can always apply. Maybe you'll be lucky. Any previous experience in the field?"

"Mind blowing," Axel jokes, and cringes right as he's said it. He hears a groan through the phone, and he knows Roxas' cringing as well.

"Mister Sullivan, that was the worst pun I've ever heard from your lips. And I've heard you sprout some really stupid stuff, you know it."

"Be nice to me, I'm drunk," Axel groans right back. He smiles. They stay quiet for a second, and Axel wonders how long it'll be before dawn. "Say, kiddo. Tell me stuff about your life."

"Stuff about my life?" Roxas echoes through the phone. "Like that thing in school where you have to introduce yourself in front of class?"

"Nice to know that some brands of childhood traumas are a universal constant," Axel snorts. "You never knew fear if you haven't been a fat ginger kid with a strong Russian accent trying to introduce yourself to a classroom full of deep south Texan children. Thank god they were not that bad. The swirlies came more from the older kids than the ones in my class."

Roxas stays quiet for a while, and Axel yawns. Then, he tilts his head on a side. "Roxas?"

"Hold on," Roxas replies, his voice a little far away. "Gotta google something."

Axel blinks slowly, his brows furrowing together in confusion. "What-?"

Roxas doesn't reply right away, and when he picks up again there's a scandalized edge in his voice. "What the fuck-they put your head down the toilet?!" he half shouts, somewhere between outraged and accusing. "That's goddamn barbaric!"

"Hold on, you were googling what a swirly is?" Axel snorts, and for some reason, that sounds so freakin' ridiculous he cannot keep the laughter out of his voice. "And you forgot the part where they flushed the toilet."

"That's disgusting!" Roxas shrieks, and his indignant tone is just too ridiculous for Axel to handle. "There's gotta be a law against it somewhere! You've gotta be kidding me, this can't happen for real."

"Calm down," Axel sighs. "It does, but it's not like everybody gets swirlies all the time. I was among the unlucky ones."

Roxas doesn't answer right away, but he gives a soft grunt.

"Are you okay?" Axel asks, slightly amused. Roxas' reaction was kind of cute. Not to mention the fact that he never heard of swirlies before. He wonders briefly how bullying works there where the kiddo lives, but it's not exactly something he cares a lot about.

"I'm kind of pissed. On your behalf. No, wait. On your kid-self's behalf."

"Thanks," Axel smiles. It's one of those genuine, soft I-like-you smiles, and he doesn't know it, but if Roxas had seen it, he'd have probably swallowed his tongue trying to stifle a gasp. "I survived, but that kinda shit tends to follow you even as you grow up."

"You mean they kept swirling you?" Roxas asks alarmed.

Axel laughs.

"No, no, oh god, no. Nobody messed with me after my fifth grade growth spurt," he says, and Roxas seems to settle, on the other side of the line. "I mean more like… you just don't forget about that kinda stuff, you know? It kinda makes you feel really dumb when you're, like, fifteen and you wanna ask out that pretty brunette from French class and suddenly the memories come back to you. And you're like wow, why should she come out with me and let me touch her boobies if her older brother used to dunk my head in the toilet twice a week back in second grade?"

Roxas is quiet for a second, then hums.

"Did she say yes?" he asks.

Axel grins.

"Absolutely. Turns out her brother used to rip the heads of her dolls off and pull her braids, so we had a great starting point for our bonding. I touched a lot of boobies, back in that period."

"Good boy," Roxas chuckles. There's a soft shuffling noise, sort of a hiss, and Roxas huffs, shouts out something in Italian before coming back to his convo with Axel. "Sorry, my dog is bothering the cat again." more rustling noises, and then, a bang. Roxas must have put the phone down, because when he next shouts, he sounds kinda far away. "Zumbrago, falla finita! Non vuole giocare, lasciala dormire!"

Axel is chuckling to himself, and Roxas comes back to the phone. "Sorry, Zumbrago is a dick."

"Zumbrago being the dog, I assume," Axel smiles. "What did you even shout at him, poor puppy?"

"Mh, I guess it translates with like… 'Cut it out, she doesn't wanna play, let her sleep' or something. And he's a dick, I swear to god. One of these days Mopie is gonna slash his snout open, and it'll be well deserved." More rustling. Maybe it's Roxas sliding back in bed.

Oh, god, right. He woke Roxas up. Maybe it's time to let him sleep. He completely forgot.

"Say, Axel," Roxas says before Axel can cut in, "You mentioned a cat."

"Uh," Axel hums. Yeah, he did, the other day. It's kind of impressive that Roxas remembers. "Yeah, but unfortunately it was a figure of speech. I'm abroad all the time, so I can't have a cat for real. I mean, I have one, but he's more Naminé's than mine, by this point. She sits the furball for me."

"Does she have a habit of setting your cat on fire?" Roxas asks, and for a second, Axel is lost. Then he remembers what he said the last time Roxas called in the middle of the night. It's ___really _impressive that he remembers so well.

"No, Naminé was born to make people happy. Well, most of the time. You don't wanna get on her bad side, though. She can truly fuck with your head."

"You seem to know interesting people," Roxas comments off-handedly on the other side of the phone. His voice is getting the same note of drowsiness as the beginning, and Axel smiles, imagining him all burrowed down in a blanket nest hanging almost desperately to the phone. Maybe it's time to let the kid sleep.

And maybe, having some sleep himself could be a nice idea. Dawn, probably, isn't that far away.

"I do," Axel smiles. "You're too tired, now, but the next time we talk I'll tell you a story about when I met this small Italian kid in a cab in the states, and how we started keeping each other awake at night."

"That sounds like – ___wait_," Roxas grumbles, and Axel, this time, can't hold back his laughter. "You're talking about me, aren't you?"

"Nothing gets past those deductive skills a' yours, huh, kid?" he breathes out, wiping tears of amusement off of his eyes. "I think you should go to bed. Me too, actually. And I think things are looking up for me actually putting the key in the keyhole, this time."

Roxas laughs. Axel smiles; Roxas has a really pretty laughter. Kind of like a silver bell, or one of those twinkling things people give to soon-to-be-mothers as presents for good luck. He can't think of the word, but yes, that's definitely what Roxas' tingly laugh sounds like.

"You know, you're an odd kind of drunk," Roxas comments, and his voice is fond. "You seem so coherent, and then you admit you couldn't fit the key in the keyhole before you called me."

"Heh," Axel sighs in agreement. That's how he works. "I generally just get very drowsy, very sleepy, and my limbs become ridiculously heavy, when I'm drunk-ish. Never blacked out drunk, though, so maybe I'd be less coherent if I actually did overdo it for one night."

Roxas chuckles. "Well, if you ever come to visit and you get shitfaced drunk here, I promise I'll keep your red mane out of the way while you vomit," he offers in a fake magnanimous tone.

Axel laughs out loud at the very mental image. "Too kind, Mister Benucci," he chuckles. "Obrigado."

Roxas laughs, and, without a signal or a warning, Axel's phone dies, cutting the communication off. Oh, well; at least they finished the convo, before his phone decided to go to bed.

Axel gets up, yawns, opens the door. Then he stops in his tracks, humming thoughtfully.

Wait.

Isn't ___obrigado _Portuguese?


End file.
